Samsung Electronics built the world's largest smartphone business by tapping China's cheap and abundant workforce. Not for much longer: it's shifting output to Vietnam to secure even lower wages and defend profit margins as growth in sales of high-end handsets slow.

Secrecy has served Samsung Electronics well. Keeping its rivals guessing has helped Samsung, the South Korean technology giant, build a formidable lead in the smartphone industry, where it now sells more than one in three handsets worldwide.

For a few hundred dollars, a US consumer can visit a local telecoms dealer and pick up a device manufactured by Samsung Electronics. But buying shares of the Korea-listed technology giant? Not so easy.

Luis Arbulu, a former Google business development and investment executive, has joined Samsung Electronics, Fortune has learned. He will be a Menlo Park-based director in Samsung's new Open Innovation Center, whose strategy includes making small early-stage investments into promising hardware and software startups.

Samsung's Galaxy S4 handset is well on its way to becoming the company's bestselling smartphone. Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun told The Korea Times the Galaxy S4 is set to surpass the 10 million sales mark next week.

Samsung sold 12.5 million smartphones in China between January and March, accounting for a 18.5% market share, up 2.2pp from the previous quarter, the report quoted data compiled by Strategy Analytics as saying.

Toshiba said it will soon begin mass producing a new type of 64Gbit NAND flash that is the smallest and fastest in its class, though it still lags rival Samsung Electronics in the development of an even denser flash technology.

SK Hynix Semiconductor will be supplying Samsung Electronics with memory chips as early as June, industry sources said on Monday. The firm will supply enough to make up 20% of Samsung's mobile business.

Samsung Electronics is considering purchasing mobile memory chips from rival SK Hynix Inc for future products including its new flagship Galaxy S smartphone to be launched this month, JK Shin, head of Samsung's mobile business, said on Thursday.

The latest toxic gas leaks may not have caused serious physical harm, but the fact that the culprit companies failed to promptly report to state authorities is raising suspicions of corporate negligence.

In a rare interview a day before Samsung Electronics's launch of a new flagship smartphone, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller on Wednesday played down the expected competition from the device. He also discussed how he believes products that run Google's Android software, such as Samsung's phone, are inferior to Apple's iPhone.

Samsung Electronics is looking to supply chips to more Chinese and other emerging smartphone makers, the head of its system chip business said, to counter any fall-off in demand from Apple, which is weaning itself off Samsung chips used in its iPhones and iPads.

Samsung Electronics plans to unveil the latest in its Galaxy line, the S4, at a European technology exhibition in February, according to company officials and local parts suppliers for the technology giant.

The deal may hurt Samsung Electronics, which last week said it would start using AuthenTec's technology in new devices. Samsung is unlikely to continue with plans to use AuthenTec under Apple's ownership.

As of 2013, the 10 ASEAN nations had a total of over 700 million mobile subscriptions, with the CAGR from 2003-2013 reaching 24%. This Digitimes Research Special Report analyzes the various mobile broadband markets in ASEAN and looks at the respective trends in 4G LTE development for those markets.

This Digitimes Research Special Report analyzes the strategies of key China-based major panel makers BOE, Tianma and IVO for attacking the different market segments through technology and pricing, and their relationship to local vendors Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, Xiaomi and Coolpad.